


All's Fair

by WhiteRose_Is_My_Life



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Character Death, Everything Hurts, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Not A Happy Ending, Starts at Academy Time and moves to Post-Timeskip, mostly angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-28 04:28:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20772530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteRose_Is_My_Life/pseuds/WhiteRose_Is_My_Life
Summary: Claude was light. Edelgard was not. "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion." - Camus





	All's Fair

**Author's Note:**

> u can find me @wrcassnessa on twitter  
im sorry in advance for this fic

He is everything she knows she can’t have. Claude is light, he is safety and happiness and comfort. Edelgard has known from a very young age that her life was not the life for someone who deserved light. But light still shines nonetheless, and for a split second, she imagines a world where she is able to shine back just as brightly. It’s wistful thinking, she knows, but there is no harm in playing pretend. 

Claude talks to her in their classes, after battles, he rushes to the front gates of the monastery every time the Black Eagles return from a mission just to ask her how everything went. She wishes that he knew he was effectively running up against an insurmountable wall. No matter how close they got, no matter how happy he made her, no matter what happened between them, they would always end up on separate sides of the road. 

He makes his first move during the ball. They dance together, and Edelgard is happy to let him lead because for once in her life, it’s a time she can safely relinquish control to someone she trusts, and goddess, does she trust him. She wonders if he knows that things will never turn out well for people like them, for someone who loves so deeply and has so much to give and for someone who can’t, despite how much they may want to. 

Edelgard finds herself with him at the goddess tower. He asks her what her dreams are and she tells him honestly. She wishes to retire to a place where no one can find her and gorge herself on sweets for the rest of her life. 

“Isn’t that a little lonely?” He asks, and she gives him a small look. There are so many emotions in her eyes that she doubts he can get a pinpoint on any exact one of them. Affection, trust, fear, longing. 

“My path is a lonely one. It has always been, and will always be.” He doesn’t respond immediately, and she loves him for it. If Claude were truly the serial flirt the rumors around Garreg Mach made him out to be, he probably would have said some half-hearted joke about not being lonely when he’s around. 

“Does it have to be?” He asks her, and when she meets his gaze she wants nothing more than to close the distance between them. So she does. 

Edelgard pulls herself onto Claude’s lap, clasping her arms behind his neck and joining their lips softly at first. He’s so receptive, his hands settle on her sides and it’s such a warm feeling that Edelgard wishes she could capture it and feel it at any time she wished to. He tastes like apples, soap, and oak wood, and Edelgard wishes she could capture that taste, too. 

Claude is the one to deepen the kiss, urging her on for more because it’s all he’s wanted for so long and she can feel his restrained desperation and it nearly makes her cry. She is being selfish, because despite whatever feelings lie between them there is no hope for anything like this to last between them, but in this moment, she thinks that being selfish might just be okay. 

She doesn’t know how long they kiss for. Edelgard finds herself lost in the sensation of having what she knows she can’t keep, because he is so  _ good  _ and Edelgard has never been deserving of such good. When they finally pull away, panting and messy and blushing, she lays her head on his shoudler because she cannot bear to see his face- she knows it’ll stay with her forever if she does. 

“Yes,” She says with finality. “It has to be.” 

-

The fires of war rage across Fódlan. Edelgard is determined to create a better world for her people the only way she knows how, so she and the rest of the Black Eagle Strike Force get to work on creating that world. She knows that she will eventually see him on the battlefield, and she allows herself to hope it is quick, no matter who wins. 

Edelgard knows that she will have to go after Leicester Alliance territory first if she has any chance of defeating the Kingdom. Claude had done his best to keep out of the war, and she hated that she had to ruin that, but there was a world she was going to create and absolutely nothing would sway her conviction. 

She does eventually see him on the other side of the battlefield. He’s the same light he has always been, shining and radiant atop his wyvern. Edelgard steeles herself for the battle to come. A part of her hopes that whichever one of them dies, it will be by the other’s hand. An arrow through the heart doesn’t sound pleasant, but if it’s from him, she doesn’t think she would mind too much. 

-

The arrow protrudes from her stomach, not her heart. The fighting is called off immediately and Claude runs over to her, holding her body from her side. She smiles up at his face, it’s full of anger and worry and  _ love _ . Edelgard moves her hand from her wound to his face, cupping his cheek weakly but contentedly. 

He is here, and he was the one to kill her, and she knows he will create a better world in her place. She doesn’t mind dying, not if she’s dying while he’s holding her. She thinks back to the night with him in the goddess tower, how that night meant so much to her and how she thought of it constantly whenever she felt weak. 

“If you had told me what you wanted to do back when we were still at the academy we could’ve done it together, Edelgard.” His voice is deeper than it was five years prior. Claude sounds angry, wracked with grief, and like he’s about to cry. He is right, to a certain extent, but she had already imposed enough of her selfishness on him back then and the chances she would’ve done so again were slim to none. 

“You have grown so much,” The empress says in response, because Claude has become such a marvelous man and the last thing she wants to spend her final moments doing is talking about what could’ve been. “It brings me joy to know that you will be an exceptional king.” 

“A king is nothing without a queen to rule alongside him.” Claude’s words are sad, but he’s smiling. The very same kind of smile that never quite reached his eyes. She wants to see his real smile, the one she fell in love with, so she leans up weakly to kiss him. 

It’s soft and gentle, a pure joining of souls that were never quite meant to be. Never quite allowed to be. Edelgard is happy, though, to see that her light shines even brighter after all the years that had passed since their time at the academy. They pull away after several seconds. 

“I love you, Your Grace.” She says, voice quiet. He can still hear her, and the smile he gives is his real one. The one she’d been longing to see. 

“And I you, Your Majesty.” 

She dies in his arms. He makes no noise. There are no victory screams or celebrations that day, just the future king carrying the dead empress in his arms solemly. Nobody looks happy to have won that day, and nobody looks forward to what still must be done. 

But it still must be done. Nobody understood that concept better than Edelgard. 


End file.
